The Day of Their Wedding

IX

WHEN the
piece ended a sweet, high pipe
of a voice behind them said, "Won't you
have a programme?" and Althea was aware
of a little white hand dangling a printed leaf
at her shoulder. She looked round and
confronted a young girl, with bright, joyful eyes,
and a smile of radiant happiness on her lips.
she was very fair, with hair of pale yellow,
which loosed itself from the mass in rings
and tendrils at her temples and about her
neck, and sunnily misted her uncovered head.
She wore a light-blue dress, and in her lap lay
a hat of yellow straw, with blue cornflowers
knotted among its ribbons. "Mamma has
one," she explained to Althea's look of
question and reluctance, "and we don't need them
both;" and she glanced at the elder lady in
black beside her, who nodded a silent assent.

Althea took
the programme provisionally,
with some halting thanks, and the girl showed,
with a deeply jewelled finger, where the
musicians had got in it. She included Lorenzo, who
was looking round at her, too, in the same
hospitable smile. At the end of the next
piece Althea offered to restore the
programme, but she made her keep it, and she
began to talk to her. She asked her if she
did not think the music was too lovely for
anything, and whether she had heard the
music at the other hotels. She contended that
it did not sound half so well there, and that
it was everything to hear it in such a
beautiful place. She asked Althea if she ever saw
such a beautiful place, and she said that she
did not believe that there was such a
beautiful place anywhere. She made her look at
the fountain, and while Althea was looking
at it she knew the girl was looking at her hat
and her dress.

At the
end of the second piece she seemed
to have gone much further with Althea in
her mind. She leaned forward to ask, "Don't
you just love Saratoga? We've been here a
week, and I don't believe we can ever get
enough of it. You won't mind my talking
to you, will you, without being introduced?
When you came through the door, I said to
mamma, 'Well, there's one person that I have
simply got to know; and when you came and
sat down right in front of us, it did seem too
much! Of course it must seem very
unceremonious, and I shouldn't do so to every one.
Do you mind?"

Althea contrived
to get in that she did not,
between this question and the next, but the
girl seemed not to care much for her answers.
"Have you ever been in Saratoga before? I
think everything is so romantic here, and
perfect. We didn't expect to stay so long,
but"--she put on a sudden state as she said
so--"we've been detained by business. My
husband had to go back to New York on
business. He's with Stroud & Malkim there."
She looked at Althea as if for an effect of the
firm's name npon her, and added, "Curtains,
you know. We did intend to go up to Lake
George and Lake Champlain and to Montreal,
but I shouldn't care if we spent every
bit of the time in Saratoga. Are you
staying in this hotel?"

The music
began again; it was the last
piece, and when it ended most of the people
about them rose and dispersed; but certain of
them waited till they could get away without
being crowded, and her new friend leaned
forward to advise Althea to wait till the jam
was over.

Lorenzo said,
"I guess you better, Althea,
and I might as well go aud register. I won't
be gone but a little while, and if you'll stay
right here I can easily find you again."

"Just as
you say, Lorenzo," said Althea,
but she looked up at him a little wistfully.

"Oh, we'll
chaperon her!" cried their new
friend, gayly; and as soon as Lorenzo left his
chair she laid her hat upon her own, and
slipped into the place next Althea. "Now
you needn't tell me if you don't want to,
but I just know you're on your wedding
journey! When you first came in, arm in
arm, I told mamma I bet you were." She
curled her lip in over her teeth, and
questioned Althea with her gay eyes; then she
flashed out: "You are, I know it! Oh, I
wish George was here! George--that's my
husband, and he's the nicest fellow! Well, I
wish you could see him; he'll be here
to-night, too. I should like our husbands to get
acquainted. I think yours is awfully
nice-looking; he ought to have a mustache; he
would look splendid in a mustache. I tell
George his mustache is too big for anything.
There he is!" She pulled a little watch from
her belt, and sprung it open; on the inside of
the case was the head of a young man, which
filled it so full that the ends of his mustache
extended invisibly into space beyond it. "Don't
you think he's good-looking?"

"Yee, I
do," said Althea; but she did not
think him so good-looking as Lorenzo.

The young
wife did not wait for an answer;
she pressed the pictured face to her lips,
snapped the case to, and tucked the watch
back in her belt. "It's taken right on the
case; they do that now, and it's so much
nicer than pasting the photograph. George
gave it to me before we were married. Well,
he had to hurry up; we didn't have a very
long courtship. We got acquainted on the
cars, and he said that the minute he set eyes
on me he knew I was the girl he was going
to marry. It was a perfect novel, from
beginning to end; and I don't care what they say,
but I know that the course of true love does
run smooth, sometimes. It didn't have a
single hitch with us ; but I didn't suppose we
should be separated this way, right in the
first week of our honeymoon. George says
it's good practice, though; he's got to be on
the road so much; and I've got to be left
with mamma, and I might us well begin early;
I've almost talked her to death about him
already." She seemed to be reminded to look
round for her mother; the older woman had
made her escape for the moment. "Oh, there
she is, by the fountain. She's just as fond of
George as I am, and she's going to live with
us when we get our flat in New York; we're
going to board awhile first. Is your husband
travelling?" She had to explain that her own
husband went about over the country getting
orders for the house of Stroud & Malkim, and
she apparently forgot what she asked, for she
followed her question up with another, not
waiting for an answer. "Have you been to
any of the stores in Saratoga yet? They
have lovely things, and so cheap." She looked
hard at Althea's costume.

"Well, if
I ever knew anything like it! I
do believe it's the very dress George and I
looked at yesterday, and I know I saw that
hat in the window. They're real imported,
the woman said, and they're dreams, both of
them. George would have got them for me
if they'd been my style. They're killing on
you."